Buying a Great PC / Gaming Rig for Under $1,000

I think it depends on what games you want to play but other then that you can definitely spend less then $1000 for a gaming rig. Maybe not for mac (I own a Mac btw, so I am not hating on it).

I guess it really depends on the games you want to play. A machine for Sim City 4 is not going to the be the same a machine for Crysis. My current main computer plays SC4 just fine, and that’s all I ask. P4-3000HT, 4GB, 8500GT-512, XP Home, 19 and 17 inch LCDs, and the only things I’ve paid for in it are the video card and one of the HDs. It can even shove around OE Cake pretty well. Though, my Athlon64 3400 runs a mean game of Solitaire on Win7. :)

Maybe, I mean, I can get a great machine for the AUD equivalent, so I agree with Aaron.

My roommate built his gaming rig for around $800–of course, not every gamer is willing to wait around for good deals on newegg.

wow. nice find man! Ive GOT to go buy one of these now. Ive been looking for a gaming PC for a while and they are all too expensive. thanks!

The guys right, you are usually right, but a lot of those PCs are beasts, and I would buy one. However I do prefer to build computers myself – even so $1000 is a good budget for a gaming PC.

OK so maybe you can find $1000 PC ( no monitor ) that will play games and maybe you’d be satisfied with the quality for the next 2 years or so but the fact is that PC games keep raising their hardware requirement, the OS needs to be constantly updated and bottom line is that at the end of the day a console like PS3 or xbox360 will save a a ton of trouble and quite some money. And if you really like playing on smaller screen I’m sure that you can get a PC monitor and connect to console to it.
I would personally never buy a computer to play games again. For me Mac + PS3 ends up being cheaper and more convenient than PC + cost of upgrades. After all we are talking over a period of 5 years.

I built my gaming PC in November of ‘07 and that came out to about $1000. This included everything: hardware, monitor, keyboard, mouse, OS, etc. At the time, the graphics card was the latest one out (8800GT 512MB), and it still performs well in new games today. What’s even better is that I think the prices on hardware are even better now than when i built mine nearly two years ago.

So yeah, a PC with a price of < $1000 is definitely capable for gaming, especially if it’s homebuilt. If you do consider buying a pre-built gaming PC from one of the smaller online companies, always do your research first in their build quality and customer service. I have heard and read about way too many bad experiences to recommend buying from CyberPower Inc. (CyberPowerPC.com).

Honestly, 2 grand sounds reasonable. The point of buying a Great PC is so that it will last. I just ordered my iMac for $3500 but it should last me two years. 2 thousand sounds good.

Those are some really good computers for the price, I was thinking atleast 1500 for what that caller wanted, but I guess not.

Definitely not. Especially if it was a desktop i was getting for 1000 or less.

I went for a Macbook Pro because I wanted a Mac and wanted to also play some nice games in windows.

512MB of graphics memory is amazing.

Playing WoW at full everything, 68 fps in Stormwind (big city) and 44 in the outland.

You can get a great gaming rig for under $1000.
I just ordered one now ($595)

Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.96GHZ 3MB Cache CPU
Samsung SATA DVD+/-RW X22 Optical Drive
Samsung 640GB 16MB Cache Harddrive
EVGA nVidia GTS 250 512MB Graphics Card
G.Skill X2 2GB DDR2 800 (5-5-5-15) RAM
GIGABYTE GA-EP43-DS3LR 775 Motherboard
Rosewill TU-155-P Case
Rosewill RP-550-2 550 Watt Power Supply

Probably will play Call of Duty 4, World At War, fine more than fine actually.

IDK About Crysis Warhead, not in 1920×1080, but in 1280×720 it should be able to pull off decent frame rates/

You can spend $400, more and upgrade it to 8GB RAM ($40 more), Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 ($115 more), Blu-Ray Drive ($80 more), and an nVidia GTX280 ($170 more)

Fraid I have to agree with Chris whole heartedly on this one. A lot depends on how your obtaining the computer a gamer is not going to resolve in buying a crappy underpowered overpriced pre-built system. I spent less than 2000$ on this rig and it chews EVERYTHING up alive including crysis and that is before I start tweaking all of my OC options an voltages. I just built a AMD 5000+ for a friend at work that would likely run just about anything under the sun other than Crysis with its integrated graphics option and a 16x slot was vacant, he spent less than 400 dollars on that rig, a 9800GTX+ will run Crysis on high settings flawlessly an put that machine at far less than 1000 dollars.

Hey..guys im new to the gaming pc world and been looking for companies to buy a prebuilt system from. I looked at maingear, ACS advanced computer systems, velocity micro, ava direct, and of course alienware. Due to my budget i can finance a alienware computer and ACS also have financing. I dont really want a alienware because of the dell thing, if searched the net and heard so positive stuff about ACS…but i still think they are kinda new…have any of you heard anything and what is your advance…thanks stan

sorry about the spelling was typing fast…